Channel 4 to investigate the Alexander Litvinenko murder

With unprecedented access, the documentary will recreate each step of the exhaustive police investigation which spanned the UK and Russia and has, until now, remained a secret.

In October 2006, Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London, with the rare poison polonium 210. It was a case that gripped the nation. As the whistle-blower on systemic corruption in the Kremlin, Litvinenko became embroiled in a world of international espionage and political conspiracies.

Hunting the KGB Killers is a pne-off 90 minute documentary to be shown on the network later this year and will reveal, for the first time, the remarkable details of the extraordinary investigation into Litvinenko’s murder through the experiences of the key Scotland Yard detectives who have never before spoken to the media.

At a time of growing tensions between Moscow and the West this is a timely insight into the dark side of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For the first time those involved in the international manhunt for Litvinenko’s murders will reveal what went on behind the headlines and how they uncovered an assassination plot that went right to the heart of the Russian Government.

Litvinenko’s death had massive political implications for the balance of international power, showing on a global stage the ruthlessness of the post-Soviet regime at a time when President Putin had been heralded as a reforming democrat by the West.

The film will include contributions from the detectives responsible for both the British and Moscow part of the investigation and the day to day running of the case, the doctors treating Litvinenko who desperately battled a mysterious and completely novel toxin, Dame Margaret Beckett, the then Foreign Secretary, Alexander’s wife Marina and his son Anatoly. It is the first time Anatoly has spoken on camera about the murder of his father.

The investigation, which culminated in a public inquiry in 2015, was one of the most comprehensive investigations by Scotland Yard in in UK criminal history. The inquiry brought to light its extraordinary details; from poisoned teapots to incompetent assassins to links to Vladimir Putin himself.